Rethinking the Academy: Problems and Possibilities of Teaching, Scholarship, Authority,
and Power in Electronic Environments

by Keith Dorwick
The University of Illinois at Chicago

Abstract

We live in a time in which the very ways in which we make knowledge
and pass that knowledge on to others is shifting and changing;
roles and identities of knowledge makers move into flux as students
teach teachers, teachers learn from students, and students learn
from and teach one another. Indeed, some teachers are giving students
control over the content of courses they teach, an inversion of traditional roles that is beginning
to revitalize teaching.

The existence of the computer, a device which can increase the
ability of its user to manipulate text, and the existence of networks
which can link those devices and thus speed the transmission and
modification of text through collaborative means, allows, if not
forces, the academy and those who work within its spheres to rethink
how we teach, how we make scholarship, and even what the role and
purpose of the academy will be in the next millennium.

The grassroots nature of these changes may end up being
far more significant to the structure of the academy than will
the technologies themselves, as undergraduate students, graduate
teaching assistants, junior faculty, and staff members begin to
demand and receive access to various hardware and software systems.

In "Rethinking the Academy," I'd like to examine the
problems and possibilities inherent in the present situation of
the academy as it exists in a web of social, political, technological,
and legal forces that are mostly beyond its own control with a
special emphasis and attention to scholarship and teaching, and
contrast that with the problems and possibilities that are increasingly
evident as growing numbers of teachers and students begin to experiment
with ways of learning and the creation of knowledge in cyberspace.

This web was peer-reviewed by Rebecca Rickly of the Kairos Editorial Board.

Note: This Kairos web-essay (linked below) is the heart of a dissertation in production (James J. Sosnoski, director, the University of Illinois at Chicago) with the same title; please visit it as it continues to grow.